Indian Antiquary Vol 03

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 45

FEBRUARY, 1874.]
ARCHÆOLOGICAL REMINISCENCES.
35
lish terminations coinbe, coomb, signifying a val- | gods or one. The group certainly bears some ley (Elfracombe, Edgcombe, &c.) and the Welsh resemblance to the ordinary representation of cwm, philologists may consider. In this valley Buddha seated between two attendants, were it stood Trimurti Kovil, i.e. temple, which I possible to suppose it having been appropriated was anxious to examine, temples to the Trimurti wholesale by the Brahmans; and I know of being far from common : but here the Trimurti another boulder on a wide desolate plain a few itself was the temple and a remarkable object. miles from Trichinapalli bearing an entablature Where the Kurumala i stream found its way on which a seated Buddha with attendants is to the bottom of the valley, stood several large | clearly cut, but this has no worship or obserrocks and boulders, in front of which arose one vances whatsoever paid it. There can be no wilder huge broad obeliskal boulder about 40 feet high, and more picturesque spot than the narrow valley and upon its side, at two-thirds of its height, in which the Trimurti stands. Above the rocky there was indistinctly engraved the outline of walls that hem it closely in, the gigantic spires a personage sitting with hands and feet folded and peaks of granite that crown the High in front, and wearing a tall mitre; on each side | Anamalai shoot up grandly into the sky, of it was another figure, very indistinct and and the spot is the water-shed of the whole Pesmaller than the central; but the whole group ninsula, for the stream that issues from the valley, was not in a perpendicular, but a horizontal after feeding several large tanks on the plain, position, with heads to the east; the ontlines joins the Palghat river that flows through were all much worn and seemed very old, and Malabar to the western sea at Ponani, being so high up, could only with difficulty be whilst the river next succeeding it, 10 miles to discerned. Beneath, at the bottom of the boulder, the east, is an affluent of the Kâ véri, which there was a step, and over it an emblem I could runs to the Bay of Bengal. not make out, engraved on the rock, and copi- I may add that Trimurti Kovil, and ously smeared with oil. A canopy covered with the Kurumalai and the Pandi villages flowers, gilt, and filagree was raised over the are laid down on sheet 62 of the Great Trigonostep and emblem. None but a Brahman might metrical Survey Map of India ;* but the villages approach it closely. A ceremony is held there are shifting, and when I visited them were every Sunday, and the rocky ground in front is situated much further back amongst the hills covered with the graven prints and outlines than the map would make them. of feet. Hard by there is a large stone chattram 9, Randolph Crescent, Maida Vale, supported on eight rows of pillars, built by a
November, 1873. Paligar in old days; the stream bathes the bot- P.S.-I take this opportunity to remark, with tom of one side of the Trimurti Rock, and a reference to the five- and four-celled open-sided rivulet was led from it by a brick channel under sculptured kistvaens mentioned in my “Memothe first step of the chattram, in front of which randa on Nilgiri Antiquities," vol. II, p. 275, of stood a handsome stone pillar, ornamented with the Indiin Antiquary, that Major W. Ross King, tasteful devices, and surrounding it in a circle in a paper on "The Aboriginal Tribus of the were eight stone images with their faces turned Nilgiri Hills," printed in No. 1 of the Journal of inwards; some fine champaca and other flowering Anthropology, mentions (at page 43) having found trees stood near, and on their branches were a beautiful and perfect two-celled kistvaen in very hung many dozens of native shoes or sandals, dense jungle at the head of the Kotagiri Pass. some old and weather-worn, some quite new, "It consisted of several large vertical slabs, formand some of Brobdingnagian dimensions, evi- ing three sides of an oblong square, and having dently made for the occasion; many, too, with others laid horizontally on the top as a roof. It latchets elaborately worked and ornamented : was divided by a central slab into two cells; the these had been presented by pilgrims to the whole interior, that is to say, the inner face of each spot. The people had very vague ideas respect- slab being covered over with carving." Here we ing the figures engraved on the boulder, and have a two-celled sculptured kistvaen. Several seemed uncertain whether they denoted three single-celled are known, and I have mentioned
Trimurti Kovil in N. Lat. 10° 28', E. Long. 77° 13; Kurumalai in Lat. 10° 26, E. Long. 77° 11'; and Pûnd. in Lat. 10° 27, E. Long. 77* 9.-ED.